Now this is sick:Now seeing that it is a Breitbart website, I thought it important to reveal some of Breitbart's past.
http://biggovernment.com/wthuston/20...or-fundraiser/ Originally Posted by pjorourke
A recent article in The Atlantic (found at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...ies-here/8246/) concerning the "death" of truth had this quote (this is a little longer read):
Other recent events have forced comparably awkward gymnastics around what is and isn’t true. (I am grateful to the Web site The Awl for cataloging several of them.) Many, but not all, of these incidents involve movement conservatives, who continue to prove savvier than their liberal counterparts about deploying new media (see Matt Drudge, aggregation; Rush Limbaugh, talk radio; Sarah Palin, Twitter).Now, I don't know if PJ knows of these tactics and agrees with this conservative scorched earth policy, or is ignorant of them. I'm not attributing either to him.
Last spring, the community-organizing group ACORN disbanded, having been subjected to withering and quasi-racist attacks by Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart since 2008. It did this even though numerous investigations had determined that the main piece of evidence conservatives had used against it—notorious “sting footage” purportedly showing ACORN representatives advising a “pimp” and a “prostitute” (both in fact conservative activists) how to defraud the government—had been heavily doctored. “The evidence illustrates,” California Attorney General Jerry Brown said in a statement, “that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting-room floor.” Just before the group was shut down, ACORN Chief Executive Officer Bertha Lewis explained, “Our vindication on the facts doesn’t necessarily pay the bills.”
Inevitably, the finding that the ACORN takedown was based on a forgery got perhaps a thousandth of the attention the fraudulent video had (in part because it lacked awesomely offensive pimp outfits). Nor would this prove the only occasion on which a selectively edited tape disseminated by Breitbart would claim a scalp. In July, the conservative Web activist helped cost African American USDA official Shirley Sherrod her job—and, in the process, contributed to humiliating the NAACP and President Obama—when he posted a two-and-a-half-minute portion of a speech she had given in March about the importance of racial understanding, edited to imply that she was a racist. When later asked about the doctoring of the tape, Breitbart refused to back down or apologize: “I think the video speaks for itself,” he said. And when the white farmer and his wife who were discussed in Sherrod’s speech—and whose farm Sherrod had been instrumental in saving—came forward to defend Sherrod, Breitbart responded by contesting their (otherwise undisputed) authenticity: “You’re going off her word that the farmer’s wife is the farmer’s wife!”
But despite one's political leanings, it is important, I think, to draw clear lines about what kind of conduct is acceptable in society, and, IMHO, a scorched earth strategy is not acceptable.
And so, with regard to the article PJ posted, I think it is important to note that Brietbart (although not the author, he does own the site and presumably approves what is said in the article) not only shades the truth but uses flat-out lies to support his position.
Comments about the nature of truth???
